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Reading Twitter in the Newsroom: How Social Media Affects Traditional-Media Reporting of Conflicts

Author

Listed:
  • Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina
  • Hatte, Sophie
  • Madinier, Etienne

Abstract

Social media changes traditional-media news on conflicts. Online posts by citizen journalists—first-hand witnesses of conflict events—change the extent, tonality, and content of traditional-media reporting of conflicts. Using an exogenous and excludable variation in social-media posts in Israel and Palestine, driven by internet outages as a result of lightning strikes and technical failures, we show that, when social media in the conflict zone is not muted by internet outages, conflict news stories on US TV are more numerous and longer. Text analyses reveal that these stories have higher emotional intensity and focus more on the suffering of civilians and less on the role of US foreign policy or elections. The results suggest that social-media-driven democratization of the conflict news, i.e., the shift of focus from information provided by war gatekeepers to information from ordinary people, helps the narrative on the side of the conflict that has more civilian casualties.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina & Hatte, Sophie & Madinier, Etienne, 2021. "Reading Twitter in the Newsroom: How Social Media Affects Traditional-Media Reporting of Conflicts," CEPR Discussion Papers 16167, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16167
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    Cited by:

    1. Jaschke Philipp & Sulin Sardoschau & Marco Tabellini, 2021. "Scared Straight? Threat and Assimilation of Refugees in Germany," RF Berlin - CReAM Discussion Paper Series 2136, Rockwool Foundation Berlin (RF Berlin) - Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM).
    2. Jaschke, Philipp & Sardoschau, Sulin & Tabellini, Marco, 2021. "Scared Straight? Threat and Assimilation of Refugees in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 14962, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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